Imagine three people at a table. Outside the light dims. The moon rises. Somewhere far doors are locking.
There are three people at the table. Two men and a woman. The sun breaks over the trees. It looks like a bowl of new lemons. It looks like a thin smile after a break in heavy, cold rain.
Three people at the table waiting. One man says to himself: when will this table let us go? The woman says: when will the sun come back, and this table, when will it release us?
Three people in the dark, in the dim, in the quiet, glowing by screen light, by the lumen of time and passing stars, these three.
When will the table release us? a man says but this time he speaks openly in repeated whispers.
In years you haven’t spoken, the other man says but to himself. Your face like a bowl of water.
Three at the table as the night calls like a faraway dog, and the rain comes and goes and Mars plunges and flowers open.
The table says nothing. What difference sun, dusk, or screen light, what difference tense or the ugly ticking of the day to the table? I see you, it says. You’re going nowhere. See the night and the still and the passing day and the passing dim and ask nothing of me more.
